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why would developers flock to an ecosystem that spends little money and buys few apps?

Because it's still a huge ecosystem. China, as a market, doesn't buy much media, but media companies would be foolish not to try to sell their goods there anyway. Porting an iOS app to Android isn't that hard. Both OSes are UNIX (or UNIX-like in the case of Android) and both support development in C/C++. It takes a minor amount of rework to get an iOS app to work on Android, so even if the profits are less, the return on investment to port is pretty high.

The difficulties in coding for Android were mostly related to OS fragmentation, meaning there were a lot of different versions of the OS out there at any given time, because every handset maker used a slightly different version. This has become much less of a concern in recent times, especially for the tablet market where Samsung is really the dominant player right now and devices tend to mostly run on the same versions of the OS.

But ignoring all of that, can anyone come up with any apps they want but can't get on Android? Because I can't. I opted for Android because I like the look and feel of it better. It has better widgets (things that let me look at my home screen and know the current time or temperature or seem my e-mail or facebook or twitter, etc.) and it offers a much more customizable experience, which I like. Plus the device was half the price of the competing Apple product, which made it a no-brainer.

I run several iOS custom development teams. I do QA on all ipad 3+, iphone 4+ and, now, mini. I really like the mini. It's the easiest form factor.

To be honest (and people will disagree) iPad is a content consumption device. Content creation is possible, but not great. The iPad handles creation better than the Mini, but the transportability, easy handling for on-the-go consumption, better battery life of the Mini make up for it... If I were in the market for a tablet intended for content consumption and knew I wanted iOS, I'd grab the mini.

Ok, so that's an article that's basically pointing out that profit share might be a more meaningful metric than market share for determining how well a company is doing. It's apparently unaware that Backberry used, and continues to use, similar arguments to justify their plunging market share. Besides, even if you buy the premise, my point was that even if Apple is the better place to make an app for, once you've made that app putting out another version for Android is relatively cheap and a relatively good investment. Yes, developers will still make more money off their Apple apps than their Android ones, but they'll make money of their android one too.

But even ignoring all that, here's the thing. That article is talking about profits from hardware sales, not app sales. Specifically, it's talking about the profits of the company that sells you a phone or a tablet, not at all about profits for app developers. What that article is actually saying is Apple manages to get 57% of all profits from hardware sales on 18% of all total sales. To put it another way, their margins are much, much higher than anyone else's. About 6 times higher than the average. Which is great news for Apple and it's shareholders, but actually means that if you buy an Apple device, all other things being equal, you're overpaying for it by a fair margin.

if you buy an Apple device, all other things being equal, you're overpaying for it by a fair margin.

Bingo!

I switched to android 3yrs ago an have never looked back or regretted it. However, I understand why people like apple stuff and would invest in more had they already tasted and enjoyed the apple flavored kool-aid; it's just not for me. I like more control over my device and my content and prefer the taste of googleade. I use (gmail, docs, picasa(photo), drive, music, video, goggles, maps/ places, and the new "Google Now" homepage / info aggregator is the first service of it's kind that I actually use) it's all mostly available for iOS, but it works better and is closer/better integrated into Google's own OS.... and I hate,hate,hate itunes is both it's store and desktop client forms.

I don't know what apps the op is missing that are "no longer made" for android, but I don't want for any. Gator's (zknives) knife steel app is on android....nuf said.

My mom got a ipad. I set it up for her to use, it makes no sense to me at all. But then again I don't get the idea of a app. for a computer either. Exp. when you can have a shortcut to the program itself. The only reason I see anything used on pads is for server farms to finally make some money.

I have the latest model of both, I like the iPad bigger screen and higher resolution, specially for video content, but the mini is great if you want the ultimate portability, I'm still amazed at how light it is, much more comfortable to use than the iPad. Go to an apple store and try them for a while